Inevitable - Unavoidable - Unchanging
The only thing we can truly control is where we place our attention and where we place our effort. Choose wisely. - Dr. Andrew Huberman
The good will come, the bad will pass, but the great is up to us.
I’m sure you’ve been through a low so deep that it seemed as though there was no escape
.
I’m sure you’ve also experienced events so grand that you believed at that moment you would live to be 100.
I’ve felt both of these, with the former being the more apparent, in recent times.
I’ll be transparent and provide examples:
Moments I thought I’d live to be 100:
Getting research assistant positions at 2 different labs after being told I could not merely shadow one lab after your Junior year
Fully internalizing that I am capable of academic success, with the catalyst seemingly being a mixture of (1) a passion from a year away from structured learning (2) a more developed prefrontal cortex.
Moments I thought I’d suffer to 50:
Having to fight the attrition that accompanies being in an environment with the majority of counterparts having a rather non-vital, careless, complaining attitude.
Being forced to learn, do, and focus on things I felt as though were removing me from my greater purpose.
Great
Contrary to the idea of luckiness and unluckiness, supernaturally amazing things rarely just happen.
Even in a religious sense, there is commonly a level of faith that is needed to see something through; though you are not doing anything to manipulate the seen world, there is still a level of effort towards and resistance against it in order to call upon a higher power to guide you/others in a way that positively benefits you.
Examples in my case:
Hours after accepting the position to be the President of the Christian club at my college and days after getting emails about my tuition being overdue, I received a full-ride scholarship. This was not my doing, but rather a supernatural ordeal, [in small part] stemming from I believe, my faith and willingness to serve with my brothers & sisters on campus.
Lo’ and Behold, I didn’t get the colleges I wanted once again, but this time it was different; there was a greater plan for my life. Instead of taking out loans against my present (distractions) and my future (financial loans), I got into a science fellowship that
(1) pays me (2) provides me with a network that has allowed me to be an RA in 2 research labas.
Gen Z Relevance
Listen, I won’t boomer out on you, and talk about how Gen Z has embraced a victim mentality, and so on and so forth; what I will discuss is a profound level of learned helplessness.
What the hell is learning to be helpless? Just try?
Yeah. That’s not how humans work when for the span of their lives they were never taught to advocate, work for what they want, and in turn graced with random bouts of mercy & pity; teaching them to adopt a strategy of learning to be helpless.
In psychology, learned helplessness is a state that occurs after a person has experienced a stressful situation repeatedly. They come to believe that they are unable to control or change the situation, so they do not try — even when opportunities for change become available.
Moments of selective, subtle despair:
I recall hating the way I looked, not knowing how to improve, and not having a clue for how long it would take to actually see/feel change.
It wasn’t until I deep-dived into health & fitness, and was willing to incur the years-long process that it would take to actually see a difference.
I recall hating school, reading, and overall learning.
It wasn’t until I took a year to reframe my outlook on learning, that I came to write 100+ blogs, read 25+ books, get academic scholarships, so on and so forth.
A moral of my story: Is that you can learn to help yourself just as quickly as you can learn to be helpless… though it is not as easy.
Where you see this online.
All of the entrepreneurship influencers that the reels algo spams you with (or maybe it’s just me) are saying the same exact thing, in a more extreme way.
They are against learning that you must rely on a big company for financial security (helpless), and they believe you can learn to utilize your skills to provide value to others (ability to help yourself), without a middleman.
[little rant] Though that is analogous, it is nowhere near the same thing; it serves no one, and in fact is a disservice, to sacrifice your time and relationships to be an entrepreneur, coach, freelancer, etc. when you don’t have an inclination for it, and don’t have an issue working.
Examples I’ve seen in others, recently.
My brother:
Eddie was not the most extroverted or bold, before starting college, but now he comes home with stories about his day. Telling us how he “went to the office, sweet-talked them into giving me a position”, and now he won’t be home until 7 pm on Thursdays.
My mother:
My mother did not start out as a licensed TESOL teacher, in fact, she started out as a paraprofessional.
She went to school, starting when I was in middle school, went on to finish grad school, became a teacher, decided that wasn’t enough, and now teaches full time while going to school full time to become an Assistant Principal.
She still finds time to cook gluten-free, seed oil-free, high-protein, home-cooked meals…. and go to the gym.
